Aidan is often mistaken for our youngest child. He still wears a size 2T in most clothes while Paulina’s Rubinesque body easily fits into a 4T (proving that even life for a toddler girl is not fair!) He is still also challenged in the speaking department. He recently learned how to say The Pledge of Allegiance at school and while we can only understand about 6 words out of the entire recitation, we’re glad that he’s getting more and more confident about speaking in general.
When we asked the twins what they wanted for their fourth birthday, Paulina quickly, without hesitation yelled, “A Dora the Explorer guitar with four strings!” Aidan opened his mouth, paused, closed his eyes as if searching for a word or phrase and then uttered a one word answer that had us baffled for four days. Paulina, who often acts as his interpreter, just shrugged her shoulders as if to say, “I got nothing too.” We continued to ask him for another couple of days and then, right before bed time Paulina said, “Aidan wants drums for his birthday!” followed quickly by, “…and I want drums too.” Maybe it was selective hearing, maybe Paul and I need to get more versed in Aidan-speak, either way, the entire week-long episode must have been extremely frustrating for our little Aidan.
Birthdays for the twins, even without the challenges of understanding what they want, are fraught with concerns. How can we make sure that each has the special experience that our non-twin kids have? Is a joint cake OK? Joint gifts (e.g., one drum set)? Should we abandon birthday parties all together and keep it small and low key? While they are still young, I’m guessing this issue won’t rear its ugly head until at least their teen years. However, given Paulina’s preternatural gift for being direct and specific, it may come sooner than we think.
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